


The Small Necessary Sadness of Waking

by Livrin



Category: Dir en grey, Jrock, the GazettE
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:21:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Livrin/pseuds/Livrin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harbor towns seemed to be made for ending as well as beginning. The proper spot to start or stop a story. With the perfect dissection between land and water, the comings and goings of vessels, the occasional cawing of seagulls flocks, and the old, half-ruined, half-restored, buildings dispersed around the city. There was a constant feel of low simmering anticipation mixed with melancholy in the atmosphere, on every corner of the city. Especially on a particularly cloudy afternoon like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Small Necessary Sadness of Waking

  
  
**A/N:** Written to this [photo](http://www.saitoogata.com/ogata/photogallery/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/%E4%BA%AC-13y-06-20-n3.jpg) [spread](http://www.saitoogata.com/ogata/photogallery/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/%E4%BA%AC-13y-06-20-n6.jpg) [of](http://www.saitoogata.com/ogata/photogallery/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/%E4%BA%AC-13y-06-20-n5.jpg) [Kyo](http://www.saitoogata.com/ogata/photogallery/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/%E4%BA%AC-13y-06-20-n4.jpg)  
  


Harbor towns seemed to be made for ending as well as beginning. The proper spot to start or stop a story. With the perfect dissection between land and water, the comings and goings of vessels, the occasional cawing of seagulls flocks, and the old, half-ruined, half-restored, buildings dispersed around the city. There was a constant feel of low simmering anticipation mixed with melancholy in the atmosphere, on every corner of the city. Especially on a particularly cloudy afternoon like this.

Ruki turned up the lapel of his coat and hunched down a little under the heavy wind. Walking shoulder to shoulder next to Kyo along the harbor line, passing through little mom and pop shops or old storage halls of red bricks converted into fancy restaurants and modern boutiques.

Dim light from some red lanterns hung outside several _izakayas_ lining down the street casted its amber tone across Kyo’s side profile. Ruki took note of it from the corner of his eyes. People shouting or walking in a hurry, voices sounded in dialect not quite familiar to ears, if Ruki closed his eyes it almost felt like drowning on land. The kind of clenching sadness familiar to the heart from standing among crowd of strangers. Rounding down a corner, they walked past a former brick stone dock converted to an open air stage with musicians and other street performers flocking to it.

‘Do you want to go take a look?’ Kyo asked quietly, tilting his head toward the cacophony of sounds, colors, and moving bodies.

Jamming his hands deeper into his coat’s pocket, Ruki considered it and nodded.

Above the stage, a trio was in the middle of playing their piece; two acoustic guitarists and a _kokyū_ player, Ruki widen his eyes in interest. It was unconventional. _Kokyū_ did not usually paired up with modern instruments, most commonly seen in the company of _koto_ and _shamisen_ in a _sankyoku_ ensemble. Still, the new arrangement seemed to work fittingly. It took Ruki back to moments when Kyo would stole him away from their busy schedules to watch _Noh_ productions. Kyo’s arm radiating warmth alongside him on the armrest, eloquent language, layered moral values dressed up in colorful garments, and ancient music awashing his other senses.

Here in this spot, notes played in similar pentatonic scale threading the air, standing under the shadow of metal arch, fenced in from all sides by the crowd, jostling him closer to Kyo’s body. The only familiar fixed point in an unfamiliar town. Ruki hunched deeper in on himself. Contrasting the surge of feelings he could felt overlowing out of him, not unlike the way waves overflowed and blurred the beach line constantly.

His heart has always been too small for his own good. He found it filled to the brim too quickly too often. Ruki swayed back on forth, a pendulum, a wrecking ball, hands buried in coat’s pockets. He has always felt particularly light in moments like this. When he was about to jump from the bungee board, when he was standing in stasis from the next immediate wrecking of a hotel room, when he was seconds away from sinking his fist into someone’s face.

When he was about to make bad decisions for all the wrong reasons.

Hoping this time it would turned out differently.

At the same time betting against himself fiercely.

_Provemewrongprovemerightprovemeright._

‘Let’s break up.’

Ruki could see the line of Kyo’s body went rigid.

The kind of stillness felt all wrong compared to Kyo’s usual calmness.

‘Sometimes I forget how much your insecurities could get the better of you,’ Kyo turned slightly, staring at Ruki straight. His eyes, two pits of bottomless black ink, unreadable.

And all Ruki could frantically think about was scratching the thin skin off his own arms with his nails. Scratching off all the inks, the permeable layers, the tendons and blood vessels, and even when you get to the white bone it was still not deep enough to hide himself in along with his baggage of sadness.

‘I am not and could never be your life jacket,’ Kyo intoned quietly, ‘I have my own dead weights. And this constant pushing and pulling is frankly getting kind of suffocating.’

Ruki flinched and balled his fists in his deep pockets. _Stupidstupidstupid. Always have to ruin everything. Always make the wrong decision._ His head echoed with familiar cutting words. The ever present bitterness seeped in deeper. _Might as well accept it, nothing good I’ve found ever last anyway._

‘Is this really what you want?’ Kyo’s voice breached his consciousness. Crashing on Ruki’s cacophony of desperation and resignation.

‘I--’

‘...Yes?’

‘......’

A sigh. ‘Despite what your head might tell you right now : I do care about you. But I’m not going to drop everything and run to you everytime you need reassurance. That’s something you have to work out with yourself. This relationship can’t be the answer to everything that you struggle with,’ Kyo run his hand through his head frustratingly, ‘but I want to be there to help you with it. But only-- Only when there are two people that really want to be in it. So... if you keep pushing me away then I’ll take the hint and take a hike.’

Ruki tighten his jaw. In a show of defiance, either at Kyo or himself, he raised his chin and stared back at Kyo from behind his red-rimmed eyes. His head felt light and there was a desperate urge lodging at the back of his mouth to say something. Anything. A hair trigger away from hysteria.

‘...You have to understand. I need to save my head, too.’ Kyo’s voice a raw thread, brittle and heavy as a noose around a neck.

‘Let’s...not push it now. We can talk about it again later at the inn. I’ll need to go and clear my head. Here, you better take this with you,’ Kyo offered an umbrella he has been carrying on the insistence of the _ryokan’s_ owner, when they told her they want to take a walk around the town in this weather.

Ruki jerked his body away and answered in a too polite whisper, ‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’ When all he wanted at the moment was to apologize for who he was.

\+ + +

The _ryokan_ owner had been right. It rained heavy one that afternoon. Kyo returned to the inn and paused in front of the _shoji_ door to their room.

It was too still. Too quiet. In the past, old arguments like this would find Kyo returned to the sight of a trashed hotel room.

He slid open the door and greeted with an empty room.

He was about to make a call from his cell when he felt a slight pressure, too light, on his back.

Cold wet fingers splayed itself on the side of his waist, bunching a tight grasp on the thin fabric of his shirt. He made to turn but a low urgent whisper begged him to stay still.

The sound of their labored breathing sounded too loud in the empty hallway.

‘...You should’ve taken the umbrella with you.’

As an answer Kyo felt the dampness seeped in more heavily on the back of his shirt. A wet puff of air from Ruki’s open mouthed breathing making it even more cold.

‘...Come on. Let’s get you into a change of clothes,’ Kyo grasped blindly and made to circle the wrist of the hand grasping too tight on his shirt’s fabric.

A gasped whimper stopped him dead.

Cautiously he called out the other’s name.

When only more infrequent gasps and heavy tremors answered him, Kyo forcefully twisted his own body, not letting go of the hand within his grasp. What he saw was too wide frantic eyes, in a too pale face, lips tinged slightly blue, and his breath felt like punched out of him as he carefully framed that familiar face between his hands.

Harsh whisper of _what do you think you’re doing you’re freezing cold_ was answered with the choked up words of _sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t know how to stay I don’t know how to stay in a good thing but I want this I want you I want you I want us_ tumbling down out of reedy throat.

There was a tightness in Kyo’s throat that felt could only be transferable in the form of tears. But right now there was only one person between the two of them could afford to do that. So he hugged the slighter body against him tight, tighter than his occasional need to punch a wall or to scream cutting words back aimed to inflict heaviest damage, and ended up breathing harshly, open mouthed, into the soft skin of tissue muscle at the juncture between Ruki’s neck and shoulder.

Standing skin to skin in an old _ryokan’s_ empty hall, a pool of water on the wooden floor surrounding them, it was not the beginning or an ending for the two of them.

Kyo fully realized it was a stalemate.

 

 

_Surviving_  
 _is the only war_  
 _we can afford._

_**Margaret Atwood - They Are Hostile Nations** _

 

 

A/N:  Title's an excerpt from Mikael de Lara's poetry, _On the Necessity of Sadness._  



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